A number of complaints came to light recently from iPad Pro owners who were unhappy to discover that their expensive Apple tablets were bent. Apple responded to these complaints by saying that the iPad Pro's unibody design "meets or exceeds" all of its high standards. Now the company has gone further, publishing a support page explaining the manufacturer and testing process of the iPad Pro, and explaining that the way the tablet is made is the reason some people see a bend. Apple insists, however, that a bend should be within a tiny 400-micron tolerance. The support article is entitled iPad Pro unibody enclosure design, and on it, Apple explains "how the enclosure is made and tested". As we have discerned from complaints, it is the LTE version of the iPad Pro that is particularly susceptible to an unwanted bend, and Apple says -- as it has done before -- that this is because of the cooling down of materials used in the casing. Few people who have a bent iPad Pro will particularly care about why it is bent, being primarily concerned about the fact that it is bent. Apple insists that the "new iPad Pro models meet an even tighter specification for flatness than previous generations", and when it comes to the "flatness specification", there should be "no more than 400 microns of deviation across the length of any side", or -- as the company explains -- "less than the thickness of four sheets of paper". Follow the bent iPad Pro saga on OUR FORUM.

IT staff are not often the fastest to install patches, lest they cause more issues than they solve, but a new vulnerability in all versions of Windows 10 and Windows Server suggests they may need to rethink that policy. The CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) today issued CVE-2018-8626 for a Windows DNS server heap overflow vulnerability. The remote code execution flaw in Windows DNS servers will allow unauthorized actors to run arbitrary code in the context of the Local System Account. Windows PCs and servers configured as DNS servers are at risk. As if synchronized, Microsoft also issued an advisory for CVE-2018-8611, a Windows kernel elevation of privilege bug that would let a hacker run arbitrary code in kernel mode. They could then install programs and view, change, or delete data, or create new accounts with full user rights. Fortunately, the DNS server exploit has not been released yet, but smarter hackers are often able to reverse engineer exploits from patches. The privilege elevation vulnerability is already being exploited in the wild. Read more about the exploits and find the download links for the patches at OUR FORUM.

The enterprises are using two-factor authentication to keep their accounts and network secure. Recently, Microsoft also announced that the company wants to reduce the usage of the passwords and offer a more secure way to login to their services. The company today announced in a blog post that it’ll now support password-less logins on Windows 10. With this announcement, it’s quite clear that Microsoft is doing away with passwords altogether. In Windows 10 19H1 preview builds, Microsoft is adding support for setting up and signing in to Windows 10 with a Microsoft account linked to the phone number. You don’t need to put a password to sign in to Windows 10 (Home or Pro edition). To get started, you would need to set up a Microsoft account with your phone number. After linking your phone to Microsoft account, Windows 10 will allow you to use an SMS code to sign in. You can also other security features such as Windows Hello Face, Fingerprint, or a PIN to sign in to Windows 10. More can be found on OUR FORUM.

2018 was a ground-breaking year for Microsoft, with the company managing to regain the respect of the IT industry and ending the year figuratively on the top of the world. In terms of execution, Microsoft’s Surface products have done really well and have been called better than Apple’s PCs by numerous reviewers, and even their low-end Surface Go tablet was named better than the iPad Pro by many. Their mobile apps have gone from strength to strength, seeing very rapid development and maintaining good review scores, and we have seen Microsoft increasingly weaving a credible cross-platform story. Microsoft’s enterprise subscription services are increasingly being seen as the default choice for customers, and even Microsoft Teams managed to unseat Slack, while their Azure cloud products have taken share from Amazon by offering developers whatever they want in a reliable and affordable package. While their Windows 10 update efforts have seen multiple stumbles, Microsoft appears to have been chastened by this and are now a much more cautious company. With such a strong 2018, here’s what to expect from Microsoft in 2019 and we have it posted on OUR FORUM.

Intelligence agencies across the English-speaking world are in widespread agreement about the race to roll out next-generation mobile networks. Top officials from Australia, the UK, Canada and the United States have all said recently that using Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s equipment poses a national security threat. For service providers in those countries, going along with that assessment comes with a catch. There is no good alternative.The United States, for its part, offers no competitive fifth-generation wireless network equipment. Europe’s Nokia and Ericsson, meanwhile, are both struggling to catch up to Huawei. South Korea’s Samsung is investing heavily in the area but has come to the party late. Thanks in part to massive government subsidies, Huawei has been able to offer equipment and services at a fraction of the price of its competitors. It has grown exponentially in the process to leapfrog Nokia and Ericsson and become the world’s largest telecommunications equipment supplier by far. This is despite the fact that they have long been almost entirely cut out of the US market. read more on our Forum

With a lot of data leaks and revelations happening, everyone is concerned about their privacy. And whatever device you use, having proper settings to ensure maximum privacy is a must. This post talks about freeware for Windows that lets you adjust your Windows 10 Privacy Settings such that you have maximum privacy on your computer. The tool is a freeware and is called W10Privacy. It has been best tuned to work with Windows 10. The main motive behind this tool is to bring all privacy-related settings on Windows 10 at one place. And the tool does its job at best. It brings you all the settings well categorized into different tabs and tells you their severity. All the recommended settings with no side effects are highlighted in green, conditionally recommended settings are marked in yellow, and all the restricted recommended setting are marked in dark orange. By restricted recommended here, we mean that the setting can have a negative effect on your computer. If you start the tool, you will be welcomed with a long list of settings and a lot of categories. All the settings in the list are there to improve the privacy scenario on your system in some or the other way. Turn off Windows 10 Privacy Settings read more on our Forum